YAKIMA COUNTY, Wash.-Over the summer, the Rimrock Retreat wildfire threatened the water supply coming from the Yakima-Tieton Irrigation District Canal, and repairs are being completed to make sure it is ready for next year’s irrigation season.
“It was a pretty scary time, it was pretty challenging for our crews,” said Travis Okelberry, the District Manager for the Yakima-Tieton Irrigation District (YTID). “Reclamation crews were out here on scene, helping us. They were clearing trees that were over the canal, while our crews were inside the canal, trying to clear big boulders.”
The 114 year old canal has survived quite a few catastrophes. First there was the Mount St. Helens eruption, covering the whole 12 miles in ash.
“Now the conditions are much worse than they were after Mount St. Helens because after Mount St. Helens erupted, everything was still green and growing,” Okelberry said. “That’s not the case anymore.”
The Rimrock Retreat fire caused an emergency three-day shutdown of the YTID canal.
“There were huge boulders, some of them four feet in diameter, that were rolling through this canal, and if you can imagine the damage that those boulders did to the bottom of the canal as they were rolling down under the water.” Okelberry said. “We had a lot of repairs to make.”
Workers and contractors have worked since to repair the YTID canal as much as they can.
“We repaired the side panels, did a lot of concrete repairs, and since then we’ve come in and repaired all of the timber structures, the animal crossings, the animal ramps, we had a bridge that had to be rebuilt,” Okelberry said.
They made sure that the YTID canal could keep providing water to the community to avoid any sort of an economic disaster.
“This canal is the lifeblood of the Yakima Valley. It supports over $700 million a year in crop revenue alone,” Okelberry said. “Just in the gross crop revenue is $700 million. There’s been studied that have been done, a complete catastrophic failure of this canal, the economic impacts of the community could exceed $3 billion.”
Stakeholders came up with a three-phase plan to keep the canal operational. Phase one was making sure the canal could finish the season without a catastrophic failure.
“Phase 2 is trying to stabilize the environment, cover and protect this infrastructure so that next season we can start up and run at full system operation,” Okelberry said.
Phase three is to identify a long-term solution.
“The district has recently settled in on a preferred alternative, which is to replace the lower half of the canal with a gravity tunnel, and replace the upper half with a retrofit, whether it’s a pipe inside the canal, or lining the canal and covering the canal,” Okelberry said.
The district’s preferred solution would cost over $240 million, and they are actively seeking state and federal support to make that vision a reality.